


Morning Star

by uumuu



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blink And You Miss It Slash, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubiously Canonical Character, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-20 02:49:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8233484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: After arriving in Middle-Earth, Fëanor finds an unexpected ally.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for the Trust and Vows square in my Trope Bingo card.
> 
> Morwë is mentioned in HoME as the leader of the Tatyar who chose to remain in Cuiviénen.

“You look like your father,” Morwë murmured, one heavy hand on Fëanor's shoulder, the other cupping Fëanor's face, black eyes scouring his features for every littlest detail that made them similar to those Morwë had known. “But your gaze is your mother's.”

Fëanor managed a small nod. He itched to draw back, put ill at ease by such gentle, intimate contact, and curled his fists at his sides to stay still, out of respect for a man who had known both his parents. Out of missing, yearning, despair. The tent was dark save for a lamp in the far corner, but the sheen of Morwë's silver hair was distinct as a beacon, and mournful as a haunting, evoking the blurry memory of Míriel's locks swinging over his cradle as she whispered 'goodbye'.

“So tragic, that Finwë is slain by the Dark One.”

Fëanor yet again could only nod, not trusting his voice to come out steady, or to come out at all.

“So ironic...so sad that those who left to be safe are dead and I, who tarried here in the world of dusk, am alive.”

Morwë bent and kissed his forehead, then slowly, reluctantly, pulled his hands away. Fëanor could barely hold back a sigh – of relief or sorrow, he himself couldn't have told. 

“I am...grateful that you have come to see me,” he forced himself to say.

“I could not believe it when I heard that the child of Finwë and Míriel had come from the West. I had to see for myself.”

“You expected to find them, too.”

“I confess I did hope...wish to see them again. But I come with a proposal too.” Fëanor's eyes narrowed, but Morwë went on too quickly for him to interject. “Bind yourself with me. I was wrong to let your father and mother go. Now I can remedy that with you, and honour their memory. We can fight side by side.” 

Fëanor touched the spot where Morwë had kissed him. He glanced the long spiked mace Morwë had set down next to the entrance of the tent, encrusted with orc blood that couldn't be washed from among the many sharp prongs. He shook his head. “You don't _want_ to bind yourself with me.”

“Why? If it is a matter of custom –”

“I...killed, in order to obtain the ships that took me here. Eldar,” Fëanor said in one breath, but without hesitancy, then raised his head to meet Morwë's face. 

Morwë lifted his eyebrows and tightened his hand on one of the many medallions made of coarse metal that decorated his leather vest, his face hovering between confusion and a subtle trepidation.

“Quendi,” Fëanor corrected. “...Nelyar.”

Morwë startled and his features froze, momentarily reduced to a still portrait, but his shock was a markedly washed down version of the one displayed by Ñolofinwë and his supporters. He didn't turn away from Fëanor, and no disgust crept into his eyes either. He didn't look at him as if he had suddenly lost the very appearance of an elf.

“I asked them to lend them to me, and they refused. I asked them to teach me how to build them, and they refused. They told me they wouldn't help me, because the Valar didn't want us to leave, that I would do better to remain in Valinor. So I decided to steal the ships, and didn't stop when they tried to stop me.” He mumbled under his breath after that, words he himself didn't recognise. There wasn't anything else to add. He couldn't offer justifications, much less seek absolution. But merely speaking of the kinslaying to someone who wasn't of his people and didn't share the weight of the dead was soothing, to an extent. He felt light, limber, the bright inrush of exhilaration of sprinting through an open field in spring. 

Only the run now would invariably end in a tumbling fall. 

“Did you tell that to the Grey Elven folk who live around the lake?” Morwë said, breaking his stance. 

“I haven't.” Fëanor too stirred into motion again, facing away from him. “I do need as many allies as I can.”

“Why tell me?”

Fëanor's gaze settled on his parents' emblems, painted side by side on the lid of the box where he kept his most precious notes. A corner was missing, the area around it charred. That, along with bits of missing paint, testified to how the box had been recovered from the ruins of Formenos. Fëanor drew a hand over his face and clawed at the collar of his shirt, bunching the fabric there.

“Because you knew my parents. It's more...personal,” he muttered. “The Valar cursed me and my sons and whoever follows me to fail, swore to crush us with their undying hatred, will gleefully deliver us to death. Too many...too many I love have been lost already, I couldn't –”

Heavy hands were laid on his shoulders, and Fëanor started, his assertion ending in a hiccup. He hadn't heard Morwë creep up behind him, and after the initial surprise he went rigid once again. Morwë tightened his hold on him and gently spun him around. 

“The Dark One is doing much, much worse than killing people. Unspeakable things,” Morwë hissed and halted, his eyes searching Fëanor's again. “If these Valar are ready to curse Quendi for a single offence, but don't come here to fight Dark One themselves after releasing him into the world again, and allow him to ply his cruelty, then they're no better than him.”

“That doesn't change the facts,” Fëanor countered. “I know my purpose remains right, and yours twice so, but you will be cursed too, regardless.”

Morwë's face creased, then his lips twisted into a lopsided, mirthless smile that had an almost mocking tinge to it, as if Fëanor didn't quite know what he was talking about. 

“Oh, child. Can we be any more cursed than we are already? Is there anything worse than having the Dark One at our heels?” Morwë said. “I wanted to leave here before I learnt of your arrival, lead my people far, far away and find a safe place for them. But what would that avail? We left Cuiviénen when we couldn't live there any longer, travelled from East to West over the whole of Middle-Earth. Yet Utumno still stands. After the Dark One has done away with every other people in his path, he will be after us. Where shall we run then? We will be hounded wherever we hide, and then he will be too strong for us to fight. But now he's still gathering his forces. This is the only chance we have. I refused the Valar, I heed their judgements not, and I do not care what happened in a land of bliss that only brought sorrow to those I loved. I have no-one to turn for help, no-one to heed my people's prayers and no-one to build girdles for us.”

“Girdles?” 

Morwë lifted his right hand and waved it, wordlessly signifying that he would tell him about that later, then tightened it on Fëanor's shoulder again, and shook him. “You said you're a craftsman, that you can fashion weapons better than swords or maces, more effective. Do that. I know this land, I know the enemy more extensively than you do. I can take care of the fighting, while you devote yourself to finding a way of getting rid of him. We will avenge Finwë and Míriel, and my people, together.”

Fëanor stared at him. 

“You can't go back, can you?”

“I don't _want_ to,” Fëanor replied through clenched teeth.

“Then bind yourself to me. I will be your guide. I will watch over you, and over your children, too.”

Fëanor told himself he couldn't refuse. It was the promise of protection for his sons that swayed him, tugging at his greatest fear. Perhaps having an ally such as Morwë would help ease his sons' fear of losing him too. It harrowed him, to see his own fear of loss mirrored in their eyes, the one thing he'd never wanted to pass on to them. He had to repeat to himself, every time, that he wasn't the only one to blame for the situation they found themselves in. He paid no heed to people's curses and sneered at their hate, but sometimes he had to remind himself that he hadn't killed Finwë. That he hadn't let Morgoth free to sow venom among the Ñoldor. That Ungoliant's darkness was not of his making. His shoulders slumped and he laid his forehead on Morwë's chest. He started weeping, though he tried not to make any sound, and would have tried to pull away if Morwë's hands hadn't risen to cradle him, the left circling his waist and the right cupping the back of his head in the same way his father had done while biding him farewell in Formenos.

*

The following days passed in a flurry of activity. Fëanor and Morwë spent most of their time together. Fëanor shared everything he knew about his mother and father's life in Valinor, but was less forward about himself. Morwë acquainted him with what the Elves had been able to garner about Morgoth's army and stronghold, and trained him to use a mace very similar to his own. During the hours of rest they slept in the same bed, and little by little Morwë felt Fëanor become less reticent, though it took far longer to gain his trust than it took to become acquainted with the contours of his body. When at last they had built enough mutual confidence that Fëanor consented to Morwë's wish that they exchange solemn vows, they didn't have time to make their decision known to their people.

The attack was sudden, and the battle lasted for days. 

They stopped trying to measure time after the second night, when the turn of hourglass was over and the person which had been monitoring it had to leave her post to take up a sword too. The defences of the encampment hadn't been completed yet, but the palisade they had built was enough to slow down the orcs' downpour and allow the elves to kill them as they came. 

Celegorm intercepted a party of orcs marching into from the south, thanks to the vigilance of the large body of scouts he had set up, his skill in the chase easily converted to the tracking down of enemies rather than of animals, and with the help of local scouts under the guide of Annael of the Mithrim elves. 

When the last of the orcs turned their backs and fled back north, Fëanor and Morwë pursued them, in an attempt to prevent them from going back to the fortress of the enemy and reveal details regarding their strength and numbers. They killed those they managed to overrun, the steep mass of the Ered Wethrin preventing any easy escape, and tailed those who managed to climb the gentlest pass, which brought them over a ridge opening onto the landscape on the other side of the mountains. Angband lay in front of them. Fëanor's body crouched forwards like a hound's, ready to sprint towards its quarry, but Morwë, conscious of the risks, put a hand on his shoulder, a vise of authority and affection, and gave the order for retreat after the last retreating orcs had been shot in the back. 

As they winded their way back down the pass, a deafening crackling sound rent the air over their heads, like a multitude of thunders exploding in the sky all at once.

“The Balrogs!” many voices cried out.

The demons flew over their heads, fire trailing behind them, and made straight for the encampment, but were intercepted by those of Fëanor's people who had remained at the foot of the mountains. A bitter clash ensued, the elves falling easily under the balrogs' attacks. One of Fëanor's twins was enveloped by flames and went down. At that point no-one and nothing could have restrained Fëanor. He spurred his horse with an agonised cry and dashed down the mountain side, charging at the fire-demons with his own variant of a morning star. Morwë could only rally his forces and do the same, but together with reinforcements from the encampment they managed to beat back the attackers, even if the balrogs left behind a scorched plain and many lying dead or dying. 

The demons weren't out of sight yet when Fëanor rushed to his son's side. The twin was lying face down and Fëanor carefully rolled him over to see his face.

“Pityo,” he called in a broken voice. The twin's hair was half-charred and his skin raw where the fire had eaten away at it. A healer crouched down next to them, but Fëanor tried to elbow him away.

“We need to take him back to the encampment!”

“Pityo!” Fëanor called again, as if he hadn't even heard the healer's words. 

“Let the healers tend to him!” Morwë shouted and forcibly removed him.

Amrod was wrapped up in a mantle and handed over to Celegorm, who took him on his horse and rode off at full speed. Fëanor ran to his own horse, but Morwë, who didn't trust him to be able to ride on his own, hopped on behind him and took the reins. 

The next few hours Fëanor spent pacing back and forth in front of the tent where the healers were tending to Amrod, alternating between raking his nails down his cheeks while mumbling unintelligible words under his breath, and hugging his other sons as they joined him, looking them over time and again to make absolutely sure they were all right. He nearly fainted when Caranthir showed up with a bleeding head wound. Morwë did his best to calm him down: it wasn't an unfamiliar task to him. He also gave orders to set up new defences for the encampment, and more tents where the wounded could be tended to. Fëanor's sons carried them out without question. They had soon come to accept his presence, and to be grateful for it. 

At long last one of the healers emerged from the tent. 

“He is alive,” the woman said so quickly that Fëanor couldn't say anything, and just as rapidly, and assuredly, added, “he will live.” 

Fëanor leapt past her and dashed inside the tent, casting a brief glance to the blood-stained cloths and tools the healers were putting away. The bed on which Amrod lay was clean, and he was bandaged from head to toe. His eyes twitched behind closed eyelids, but the healers told Fëanor he had been given plenty of poppy-seed to ensure he could rest and not feel the pain to keenly. Fëanor nodded, kneeling beside the bed and simply laying both hands on Amrod's right, in order not to disturb him. 

He stayed like that for a while, peering intently at his son's face, then stood on his own and turned. Morwë was waiting for him, nodded to him encouragingly, and led him outside. As soon as they stepped into the now peaceful, slumbering darkness he swept Fëanor into an enveloping embrace, and held him tight.


End file.
